Co-Operative Struggles: Work Conflicts in Argentina’’s New Worker Co-Operatives

In Co-operative Struggles, Denise Kasparian expands the theoretical horizons regarding labour unrest by proposing new categories to make visible and conceptualize conflicts in the new worker co-operativism of the twenty-first century.

After the depletion of neoliberal reforms at the dawn of the twenty-first century in Argentina, co-operativism gained momentum, mainly due to the recuperation of enterprises by their workers and state promotion of co-operatives through social policies. These new co-operatives became actors not just in production but in social struggle. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they shape a socio-productive form not structured on wage relations: workers are at the same time members of the organisations. Why, how and by what cleavages and groupings do these co-operative workers without bosses come into conflict?

Co-operative Struggles received honourable mention in 2024 for the biennial Joyce Rothschild Book Prize, which recognizes significant contributions to the advancement of economic democracy.

Denise Kasparian, Ph.D. in Social Sciences (2017), University of Buenos Aires, is Assistant Professor at that university and Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council. She has published books and articles on conflict and social change in co-operatives.